שְׁחַת
to corrupt
‘to corrupt’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Stem
- Qal Passive
- An archaic passive of the Qal, preserved in a few forms.
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7844 appears — 2 distinct verses across 1 book. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Daniel 2 verses
- Daniel 2:9 וּ/שְׁחִיתָה֙ conj + Qal Passive ptcp.pass fs But if you don't make known to me the dream, there is but one law for you; for you have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, until the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me the interpretation of it.
- Daniel 6:4 וּ/שְׁחִיתָ֜ה וּ/שְׁחִיתָ֔ה conj + Qal Passive ptcp.pass fs conj + Qal Passive ptcp.pass fs Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find occasion against Daniel as touching the kingdom; but they could find no occasion nor fault, because he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
שחת (shᵉchath) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to corrupt.” A scarce word — 2 verses in all of the Hebrew Bible. It clusters heavily in Daniel, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. It first appears in Daniel 2:9. Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7844 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 2 verses 100%
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 2 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 100%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Corrupt 1×, Fault 1×, Or fault 1×
- American Standard Version: Corrupt 1×, Fault 1×, Or fault 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Or corruption 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Or corruption 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7844 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7844 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7844 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7844 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 3 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- to corrupt
(Peal)
- corrupt (participle)
- fault (substantive)
Word origin
Derived from שחת (shâchath) (H7843) — to destroy.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
שָׁחַת
- (b. h.) to be low, bent.
- (cmp. חָבַל) to pervert, ruin, do harm. Ex. R. s. 8 ש׳ לנפשו he did harm to himself; a. e.—Ab. d. R. N. ch. I, end וירדו … לשַׁחֲתוֹ ed. Schechter (ed. לשרתו, corr. acc.) and the ministering angels came down to destroy him (Adam). Kidd. 24ᵇ (ref. to Ex. XXI, 26) עד שיתכוין לשַׁחְתָהּ when he intended to destroy it. Naz. 4ᵇ לשַׁחֵת, v. שֵׂעָר; a. e. e.g. Exodus 21:26
- 1. same. same. Ex. R. l. c. ה׳ לנפשו, v. supra. Tanḥ. Tol’d. 6 לילך … להַשְׁחִיתוֹ to go to Nabal to ruin him; a. fr.—Esp. בַּל תַּשְׁחִית (v. בַּל) the law forbidding to ruin anything wantonly (derived from Deut. XX, 19). Sabb. 129ᵃ והא קעבר מר משום בל ת׳ in doing so, do you not disregard the law which forbids wilful destruction? בל ת׳ דגופאי עדיף לי not to do injury to myself is a higher duty to me; ib. 140ᵇ; a. fr. e.g. Deuteronomy 20:19
- 2. to commit a nuisance. Y. Succ. V, 55ᶜ (play on משתחויתם, Ez. VIII, 16) [read:] שהיו משתחוים לחמה ומַשְׁחִיתִים להיכל they prostrated themselves in worship of the sun, and committed nuisance towards the Temple (v. Bab. Succ. 53ᵇ; Yoma 77ᵃ). e.g. Ezekiel 8:16
שְׁחַת
- ; part. pass. שְׁחִית mutilated. Targ. Y. Lev. XXII, 24 (h. text נתוק).
שַׁחַת I
- pit, grave. Pesik. R. s. 10 (ref. to Ps. LXXV, 8) זה שהשפיל לישראל לבאר ש׳ וכ׳ as zeh (Neh. IX, 18) brought Israel down to the lowest pit, so did zeh (Ex. XXX, 13) lift it up &c.; a. e. e.g. Psalms 75:8
שַׁחַת II
- (preced.) low growth, corn in its earliest stage used instead of grass. Peah II, 1 הקוצר לש׳ he who cuts young corn to be used as fodder; Tosef. ib. I, 8. Men. X, 8 (71ᵃ) קוצר לש׳ ומאכיל לבהמה (Bab. ed. מאכל, corr. acc.) one may cut barley as shaḥath and give it to the cattle (before the ʿOmer has been offered); Tosef. ib. X, 32 קוצר לש׳ עד שלא וכ׳ as to cutting barley for fodder: before it has approached maturity by one third, one may begin &c. Men. 71ᵇ כל לש׳ לא וכ׳ whatever is for fodder is not considered as harvesting. Sabb. XXIV, 2. Kidd. 62ᵇ; a. e.
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms H7844 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/שְׁחִיתָ֔ה | Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 6:4 | 1 |
| וּ/שְׁחִיתָ֜ה | Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 6:4 | 1 |
| וּ/שְׁחִיתָה֙ | Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 2:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7844, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
